It would be easy to be cynical. Yet another campaign about talking about mental health. Between Time to Talk Day and the new HeadsTogether campaign it feels like we are not short of people urging us to open up about our mental wellbeing.

People continued to be discriminated against by the very systems that are supposed to support them. Within health services, welfare and housing, people reported no improvement or even more discrimination than they did in 2008.

A new special edition reporting findings from the Viewpoint survey was published in July. It includes a paper on our qualitative research into mental health discrimination experiences which was co-authored with four peer researchers. We reflect on the importance of experts by experience being named as authors, and why they are so often absent from peer reviewed journal articles.

Monday morning and I was on my way to work catching up with the news and social media. I had missed an excellent piece in the Sunday Times by Alistair Campbell about his brother Donald who died recently aged 62. Luckily it is available as a blog. Reading, I was immediately absorbed. That’s the power of the personal narrative. I also felt very, very sad. Another person dying far too early after years of treatment for schizophrenia.

How to reduce mental health related stigma and discrimination? This is a topic that we have been doing research on for several years, most recently working in schools to evaluate the Time to Change children and young people pilot campaign. Time to Change have just released the next phase of their campaign targeting young people and parents in particular, building on the message ‘small things can make a big difference’.

On the 10th September 2015, across the globe, people came together to mark the 13th annual World Suicide Prevention Day. This saw reports of candlelight vigils in the UK, flash-mobs in India, the release of balloons across America, and in Ireland, famous landmarks were lit up in orange.

Katherine Barrett describes her experience of working with the McPin Foundation to interview people about experiences of discrimination

I have just been involved in some very interesting research at the McPin Foundation. I have been a telephone interviewer for the Viewpoint Survey for two years now and in October 2013 I was invited to take part in a qualitative study using the Viewpoint questionnaire.

In March, the Mental Health Research Network (MHRN) ran their Annual three day National Scientific Meeting in London. The scientific meeting is an opportunity for mental health professionals, researchers, service users and carers to get together and find out about the different research that is currently being supported by the MHRN.

Findings from the evaluation of the first three years of Time to Change England’s biggest ever anti-stigma campaign, were published on 3 April in the British Journal of Psychiatry and commented upon by journalists at the Times and Guardian. This evaluation includes the Viewpoint Survey, run by King’s College London in partnership with the McPin Foundation.